A Primer on Natural Resource Science

U.S. Natural Resources and Climate Change: Concepts and Approaches for Management Adaptation

---

On November 22 this bill completed third reading and is now awaiting Royal Assent. As a Registered Professional Biologist and a Professional Chemist, this new legislation will have a significant effect on my professional life and I think it is important for the public to understand what it will mean for them.

In this blog post I want to point out some important information about professionals in the natural resources sector in BC. For simplicity when referring to professionals I will rely on resources from the College of Applied Biology rather than jumping between organizations. Professionals are highly-trained specialists who do the basic science in the natural resources sector.

They design the investigations; collect and compile the data; write the reports; and make the recommendations to government. The first thing you need to understand is that a revocable professional designation is THE critical tool available to ensure that professionals behave in an appropriate and ethical manner. No professional error is justification for them withdrawing my PhD. But my professional designations I am a Registered Professional Biologist and a Professional Chemist can be revoked for any number of reasons. Most professional organizations provide their members with an individualized professional stamp.

This allows professionals to indicate on official documents when they are acting in the role of a professional. Any critical document is stamped and signed by the professional as an attestation that the work has been completed in accordance with professional guidelines. The stamp is proof to a regulator, or an outside third party, that the professional is staking their reputation on that document. Misuse of the stamp is grounds for removal of the stamp.

The critical feature of a revocable professional designation is that it give regulators confidence that the identified professionals are appropriately qualified and monitored for their behaviour. From a professional perspective being a QP is a big thing in the natural resources sector and is something you definitely want to protect. To get a professional designation you need a combination of education and professional experience to satisfy the regulator of your professional body that you are qualified to be a member.

Natural Resource Administration

Not all organizations have professional designations and not all professional designations are equal. You will notice that some other groups are missing. This leaves students with a geography degree out in the cold when it comes to working as professionals in the natural resources sector in BC. This severely limits their ability to work in the field as they would need another professional to sign and stamp critical documents for submission to the regulator. The College some groups use different names is the body that governs each professional organization and serves, and this is the important part, primarily to protect the public interest.

They do so by making sure that their members are competent and act in accordance with the rules.

They operate the discipline committees and the oversight committees and respond to, and investigate, complaints about members. To serve its roles correctly the College cannot be an advocate for its members but rather an advocate for the public. As presented by the College of Applied Biology. Serious problems arise when a College forgets its role and tries to be an advocate for its members instead of a protector of the public good.

College of Teachers can tell you what happens in that case. When managing to support resilience becomes infeasible, adaptation may require more than simply changing management practices—it may require changing management goals and managing transitions to new ecosystem states. After transitions have occurred, management will again support resilience—this time for a new ecosystem state. Natural resource management practices in the United States were developed under relatively stable climatic conditions in the last century, and based on the presumption that ecological systems tend toward a natural equilibrium state for which one could manage Dixon ; US-GAO ; Heller and Zavaleta However, it is now understood that widespread ecological sensitivities to climate variability and change necessitate a re-examination of management practices in the context of a dynamic climate system Adger and others A recent report commissioned by the United States Climate Change Science Program CCSP reviewed management practices for reducing the impact of climate change on sensitive ecosystems and natural resources.

The report, which examined selected management systems for protected lands and waters within the United States i. This article examines concepts and approaches distilled from across the management systems reviewed in the report and concludes that only through a transformation of management and goal-setting approaches—from a static equilibrium view of the natural world to a highly dynamic and variable approach—will it be possible to make major advances in adaptation to climate change. Adaptation to climate change refers to adjustments in natural or human systems in response to climate change or impacts IPCC In biological disciplines, adaptation refers to the process of genetic change within a population due to natural selection, whereby the average state of a character becomes better suited to some feature of the environment Groom and others This type of adaptation, also referred to as autonomous adaptation IPCC , is a reactive biological response to climate stimuli and does not involve intervention by society.

This article focuses on this latter form of adaptation. Thus far, the literature has focused largely on management adaptations that increase the resilience of ecological systems to climate change Scheffer and others ; Turner II and others ; Tompkins and Adger ; Hansen and others ; Grimsditch and Salm ; Walker and Salt ; Heller and Zavelata Here, resilience refers to the amount of change or disturbance that a system can absorb before it undergoes a fundamental shift to a different set of processes and structures Holling ; Gunderson ; Bennett and others Thus, the adaptation approaches discussed in the first part of this review consist of strategies for supporting the ability of ecosystems to persist at local or regional scales.

Only more recently has the science and management community begun to grapple with what constitutes adaptation when resilience can no longer be maintained Millar and others ; a discussion of this emergent topic takes place in a later section.

This article begins with an overview of the prerequisite for any adaptation effort: This is followed by a review of management adaptation strategies currently available from the literature resilience approaches. A subsequent section discusses real or perceived barriers to implementation in terms of how they may be converted into opportunities for success. Specific management goals for ecosystems in different management systems e. Goals are commonly expressed in terms of maintaining ecosystem integrity, achieving restoration, preserving ecosystem services, and protecting wildlife and other ecosystem characteristics CCSP The achievement of management goals is thus dependant on the ability to protect, support, and restore the structure and functioning of ecosystems.

Changes in climate may affect ecosystems such that management goals are not achieved. Identified management goals should be analyzed for their sensitivity to climate variability and change, as well as to other stressors present in the system that may interact with climate change Kareiva and others Adaptations to climate variability and change are meant to reduce the risk of failing to achieve management goals. The first step is to understand how climate change will impact key ecosystem components and processes that are essential to attaining management goals.

Impact assessments combine our understanding of the current state of the system with drivers of environmental change to project potential responses to changes in those drivers Carter and others ; Carter and others Climate change impacts are defined by 1 the character and magnitude of climate changes likely to affect a given location, and 2 the sensitivity of a given conservation target to climate change. Assessing the nature of the changes a population or system is likely to experience requires projections of changes in both climate and climate-driven processes Baron and others ; Scott and others For example, managing forests in a changing climate requires data on projected changes in rainfall and temperature——as well as data on current and projected condition of vegetation——in order to understand processes such as changing fire regimes Joyce and others Sensitivities of target organisms or processes to climate change depend on several aspects of the biology of a species or the ecological functioning of a system.

A screening of sensitivities can be performed through a literature review of critical thresholds Carpenter and others ; Scheffer and Carpenter ; Burkett and others ; Groffman and others and coping ranges Yohe and Tol ; Willows and Connell ; Burton and others ; Carter and others , which provides the basis for understanding the implications of changes in future conditions.

For example, species that are physiologically sensitive to changes in temperature or moisture; species that occupy climate-sensitive habitats such as shallow wetlands, perennial streams, and alpine areas; and species with limited dispersal abilities will be sensitive to climate change Root and Schneider Populations with slow growth rates and populations at species range boundaries are also likely to be sensitive Pianka ; Lovejoy and Hannah , as will species, communities, or ecosystems that are highly dependant on specific climate-driven processes such as fire regimes, sea level rise, and hydrology.

In addition to understanding which organisms and systems are most sensitive to climate change, managers need to know the baseline conditions of a given system. Ecologists, especially marine ecologists, have drawn attention to the fact that the world has changed so much that it can be hard to determine an accurate historical baseline for any system Pauly ; Jackson and others When dealing with sensitive, endangered, or stressed systems, experimental perturbation is not feasible.

When available, paleoecological records can be used to examine past ranges of natural environmental variability and past organismal responses to climate change Willis and Birks Historic baselines have the potential to offer insights into how to manage for climate change. For example, while the authority to acquire land interests and water rights exists under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, lack of baseline data on flow regimes makes it difficult to determine how, when, and where to use this authority Palmer and others Data on species composition and distribution; rates of freshwater discharge into estuaries; river flooding regimes; magnitude and timing of anadromous fish runs; forest fire regimes; and home ranges, migration patterns, and reproductive dynamics of sensitive organisms would all be useful for making management decisions given the potential effects of climate change Joyce and others ; Scott and others ; Peterson and others ; Palmer and others However, baselines also have the potential to be misleading.

For example, Joyce and others noted that historic baselines are useful only if climate is incorporated into those past baselines and the relationship of vegetation to climate is explored. An ecological baseline based on an historic climate that will never again be seen in a region should not be used as a goal. At the same time, adjusting baselines to accommodate changing conditions requires caution to avoid unnecessarily compromising ecosystem integrity for the future and losing valuable historical knowledge. Although monitoring is already recognized as an important component of management, in the face of climate change, monitoring will be even more essential.

Monitoring will be needed to detect changes in baseline conditions as well as to facilitate timely adaptation actions. Monitoring also provides a means to gauge the effectiveness of management actions. Some monitoring may be designed to detect general ecological trends in poorly understood systems. However, most monitoring programs should be designed with specific hypotheses in mind and with trigger points that will initiate a policy or management re-evaluation Gregory and others Monitoring targets will have to be carefully selected to represent the system in a tractable way and to give clear information about possible management options Gregory and Failing Some systems will require site-specific monitoring, whereas others will be able to take advantage of more general monitoring programs see Kareiva and others for examples of potential monitoring targets.

For instance, Joyce and others highlight the need to monitor both native plant species and non-native species while suggesting a more general monitoring program would be adequate to detect changes in tree establishment, growth and mortality. Although directed, intensive monitoring programs may seem daunting, there are several opportunities to build on existing and developing efforts.

Some federal lands have detailed species inventories e. However, while monitoring is critical, it is only one step in the management process and does not itself address the effects of climate change. Even when equipped with climate projections, baseline information and monitoring data, managers still face very complex decisions.

The high degree of uncertainty inherent in assessments of climate change impacts can make it difficult for a manager to translate results from those assessments into practical management actions Dessai and others However, uncertainty is not the same as ignorance or lack of information—it simply means that there is more than one outcome possible as a result of climate change.

Fortunately, there are approaches for dealing with uncertainty that allow progress. One key step is scenario-building Hannah and others ; Johnson and Weaver While it is not possible to predict the changes that will occur, managers can get an indication of the expected range of changes using scenarios, and they can use that range to develop appropriate responses. To develop a set of scenarios—i. These scenarios explore current assumptions and expand viewpoints of the future. In the climate change impacts area, approaches for developing scenarios may range from model-based scenarios, to analog scenarios, to informal synthetic scenarios.

Model-based scenarios explore plausible future conditions through direct representations of complex patterns of change. Scenarios are developed using a number of different realizations from global climate models that are driven by multiple alternative future emissions paths. The outputs are spatially downscaled using statistical methods or regional climate models, and the resulting scenarios become the basis for exploring potential ecosystem responses. Analog scenarios make use of existing climate information, either at the region in question temporal analogs or from another region that currently experiences a climate anticipated to resemble the future climate of the site under study spatial analogs.

Temporal analogs may be constructed from paleoclimate information or from the historical instrumental record. Synthetic scenarios specify changes in particular variables and apply those changes to an observed time series. A synthetic scenario might start by simply stating that in the future, summers will be hotter and drier.

Along with developing multiple scenarios using the methods described above to discover potential ecosystem changes, it may also be useful to conduct sensitivity analyses that further explore ecosystem behaviors and identify ranges of potential changes in ecosystem endpoints. For example, precipitation and temperature would be perturbed at specific increments over a plausible range of changes—e. This approach may help managers to identify thresholds beyond which key management goals become unattainable. Scenario-building approaches and sensitivity analyses provide the foundation for scenario planning—planning for multiple possible future events Peterson and others ; Carpenter and others ; Cumming The strategy is to then design a variety of management strategies that are robust across the whole range of scenarios and associated impacts.

Management of ecosystems for any objective will be made easier if the systems are resilient to change—whether it is climate change or any other disturbance. For example, a highly resilient coral reef might bleach but would be able to recover rapidly Keller and others Similarly, a resilient forest ecosystem would quickly re-establish plant cover following a major forest fire, with negligible loss of soils or fertility Joyce and others An important contributing factor to overall resilience is resistance , which is the ability of an organism or a system to remain structurally and functionally un-impacted by major disturbance or stress Grime and others ; Grimsditch and Salm Resistance contributes to resilience since ecosystems that contain resistant individuals or communities will exhibit faster overall recovery through recruitment and regrowth after a disturbance.

Insights from experiences with unpredictable and extreme events such as hurricanes, floods, pest and disease outbreaks, invasions, and forest fires can be readily applied to managing in the context of climate change. A clear exposition of these approaches is the starting point for developing best practices aimed at climate adaptation. The seven categories are inclusive of the range of adaptation options found across the six management systems reviewed in the CCSP report. It is important to note that the strategies discussed under these approaches are options, not recommendations; the efficacy of many of the individual strategies has yet to be fully tested and would depend on the specifics of place, ecosystem, project design, etc.

Managing for resilience often implies minimizing anthropogenic stressors e. For example, one way of enhancing resilience in wildlife refuges is to reduce other stresses on native vegetation such as erosion or altered hydrology caused by human activities Scott and others Marine protected area managers may focus on human stressors such as overfishing and excessive inputs of nutrients, sediments, and pollutants, both inside the protected area and on adjacent land and waters Keller and others The resilience of rivers could be enhanced by strategically shifting access points or moving existing trails for wildlife or river enthusiasts in order to protect important riparian zones Palmer and others Examples of potential adaptation actions that focus on reduction of anthropogenic stresses as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing.

Within ecosystems, there may be particular structural characteristics e. Such key ecosystem features could be important focal points for special management protections or actions. For example, managers of national forests may proactively promote stand resilience to diseases and fires by using silviculture techniques such as widely spaced thinnings or shelterwood cuttings Joyce and others Another example would be to aggressively prevent or reverse the establishment of invasive non-native species that threaten native species or impede current ecosystem function Baron and others Preserving the structural complexity of vegetation in tidal marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves may render estuaries more resilient Peterson and others Establishing and protecting corridors of connectivity that enable migrations can enhance resilience across landscapes in national wildlife refuges Scott and others Examples of adaptation actions that focus on protection of key ecosystem features as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing.

Representation involves the protection of the greatest diversity of biotic and abiotic systems possible. Depending on the application, this could mean protecting multiple genetically-variable populations of a species, protecting different communities of an ecosystem type, or protecting a variety of habitats.

A management plan for a large ecosystem that includes representation of all possible combinations of physical environments and biological communities increases the chances that, regardless of the climatic change that occurs, somewhere in the system there will be areas that provide a source for recovery.

Employing this approach with wildlife refuges may be particularly important for migrating birds because they use a diverse array of habitats at different stages of their life cycles and along their migration routes, all of which will be affected by climate change Scott and others At the level of species, it may be possible to increase genetic diversity in river systems through plantings or via stocking fish Palmer and others , or maintain complexity of salt marsh landscapes by preserving marsh edge environments Peterson and others Examples of adaptation actions that focus on representation as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing.

Replication is simply managing for the continued survival of more than one example of each ecosystem or species, even if the replicated examples are similar. Increasing redundancy acts as a form of insurance against the unpredictable nature of climate change. With marine protected areas, replication is explicitly used as a way to spread risk: The analogy for forests would be spreading risks by increasing ecosystem redundancy and buffers in both natural environments and plantations Joyce and others It is prudent to use replication in all systems.

In practice, most replication strategies also serve as representation strategies since no two populations or ecosystems can ever be truly identical , and conversely most representation strategies provide some form of replication. Examples of adaptation actions that focus on replication as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing. In many cases functionally intact ecosystems confer more resilience to extreme events such as floods and storms.

Thus restoration of degraded ecosystems can be a valid management adaptation to climate change. For example, the restoration of wetlands and natural floodplains can increase resilience to floods. Restoration of particular species assemblages may also be critical to managing for resilience—a good example of this would be fire-adapted vegetation in forests that are expected to see more fires as a result of hotter and drier summers Joyce and others In the case of estuaries, restoring the vegetational layering and structure of tidal marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves can stabilize estuary function Peterson and others Examples of adaptation actions that focus on restoration as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing.

The term refugia refers to physical environments that are less affected by climate change than other areas e.

Relocation refers to human-facilitated transplantation of organisms from one location to another in order to bypass a barrier e. This approach is also referred to as assisted colonization or assisted migration see Hoegh-Guldberg and others , for example. Refugia and relocation, while distinct concepts, are actually subsets of one or more of the approaches listed above. For example, if refugia can be identified locally, they can be considered sites for long-term retention of species e. Or, in national wildlife refuges, it may be possible to use restoration techniques to reforest riparian boundaries with native species to create shaded thermal refugia for fish species Scott and others In the case of relocation, an example would be transport of fish populations in the Southwest that become stranded as water levels drop to river reaches with appropriate flows e.

Transplantation of organisms among national parks could preserve system-wide representation of species that would not otherwise be able to overcome barriers to dispersal Baron and others Examples of adaptation actions that focus on the use of refugia as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing.

Examples of adaptation actions that focus on relocation as a means of supporting resilience; many of these options are not yet proven and require testing. Once adaptation strategies have been selected, adaptive management is likely to be an effective method for implementation, given uncertainty in their effectiveness.

Adaptive management is an iterative process in which management actions are followed by targeted monitoring, the results of which inform changes in management actions Walters and Hilborn In this cyclic process, management actions serve as full-scale field experiments.

A Primer on Natural Resource Science - Fred S. Guthery - Google Книги

Since adaptive management emphasizes managing based on observation and continuous learning, it provides a means for addressing varying degrees of uncertainty in our knowledge of current and future climate change impacts Holling ; Walters ; FEMAT ; Moir and Block ; Stankey and others Adaptive management in the context of climate change involves the consideration of potential climate impacts, the design of management actions that take those impacts into account, monitoring of climate-sensitive species and processes to measure management effectiveness, and the redesign and implementation of improved or new management actions.

Releasing water from a dam allows for the application of highly regulated experimental treatments and assessments of effects. Recent examinations of the difficulty of implementing adaptive management have emphasized that the temporal and spatial scale, dimensions of uncertainty, risks, and insufficient institutional support can create major difficulties with applying adaptive management. When one considers adaptive management in response to climate change, every one of these potential difficulties is at play Arvai and others ; Gregory and others The critical challenge will be to state explicit scientific hypotheses; establish monitoring programs with predefined triggers that initiate a re-examination of management approaches; and create flexible policies and institutional frameworks Gregory and others These challenges do not mean adaptive management is impossible—only that attention to hypotheses, monitoring, periodic re-evaluations, and flexibility are necessary.

Although there may be many theoretically possible adaptation strategies, a very real consideration for managers is whether they are feasible. Understanding these barriers helps in assessing the feasibility of specific adaptation options and identifying corresponding opportunities for improving implementation success.

Barriers and opportunities can be divided into four categories: As pertains to protected areas in the United States, these barriers and opportunities stem from mission statements and management principles. However, the specific management goals vary across systems due to the unique mission statements articulated in their founding legislations. Missions are then manifested through management principles that interpret those goals in ways that may inhibit or enhance the capability to adapt.

For example, legislative features can be used to coordinate management outside of jurisdictional boundaries. These activities are especially applicable to managing shifts in species distributions and preventing species extirpations likely to result from climate change. Portions of existing legislation could also be used to influence dam operations at the state level as a means of providing adaptive flow controls under future climate changes e. As these examples suggest, climate change impacts often can be addressed within existing legislative frameworks.

Social Tools

Examples of legislation and regulation as barriers to and opportunities for adaptation. Each management system mandates the development of a management plan. Developing climate change adaptation strategies should be part of all planning exercises, both at the level of individual units and collaboratively with other management units. A natural next step then would be to prioritize actions within the management plan. Different approaches may be used at different scales to decide on management activities across the public lands network or at specific sites.

Baker, and Gifford Pinchot National Forests have combined resources to produce coordinated plans Joyce and others Examples of management policies and procedures as barriers to and opportunities for adaptation. In some cases, existing management plans may already set the stage for climate adaptation. Even destructive extreme climate events can become management opportunities for addressing long-standing problems such as overbuilding in floodplains or degradation of coastal wetlands; in some estuaries it may be possible for decision makers to use up-front planning to prevent rebuilding in hazardous areas of high flood risk and to restore wetlands with provisions for their upland migration with sea level rise Peterson and others Management plans that are allowed to incorporate climate change adaptation strategies but that have not yet done so provide a blank canvas of opportunity.

State wildlife action plans Scott and others and ecosystem-based fishery management plans Peterson and others are examples of this type of leveraging opportunity. Stakeholder processes can be an opportunity to move forward with new management approaches if public education campaigns on adaptation to climate change precede the stakeholder involvement.

The issue of climate change has received sufficient attention that many people in the public have begun to demand actions by the agencies to address it. Managers may lack sufficient resources to deal with routine needs and even fewer resources to address unexpected events that will likely increase as a result of climate change.

Further, while climate change stands to increase the scope of management by increasing both the area of land requiring active management and the planning burden per unit area because of adaptive management techniques , some agencies also face decreasing personnel in some regions Scott and others In addition, many agency personnel do not have adequate training, expertise, or understanding to effectively address emerging issues. Yet despite these constraints, there may be creative ways to augment the workforce and stretch budgets to alter or supplement practices that would enable adaptation to climate change.

Examples of human and financial capital as barriers to and opportunities for adaptation.

A Primer on Natural Resource Science book download

Tackling the challenge of managing natural resources in the face of climate change requires that staff members not only feel valued but also empowered by their institutions. With the threat of climate change further compounding management challenges, it is important that this passion be fully cultivated. Existing employees could be effectively trained or specialist positions designated to attack climate change issues within the context of their current job descriptions and management frameworks Joyce and others For example, the National Park Service has recently implemented a program to educate park staff on climate change issues, in addition to offering training for presenting this information to park visitors in 11 national parks Baron and others Such activities offer a cost-effective mechanism for empowering existing employees with both knowledge and public outreach skills.

Agency employees play important roles as crafters and ultimate implementers of management plans and strategies. Risk aversion coupled with the uncertainty surrounding climate change could lead managers to opt for the no-action approach, when the impending severe effects of climate change should elicit the opposite response e.

First, resource scientists have monitoring data and research results that are often underused. Second, monitoring efforts could be conducted with specific objectives in mind to increase usefulness for managers. Finally, scientists can support management by targeting their research. All of these are opportunities for interactions among scientists and managers that provide information relevant to major management challenges. The need for monitoring efforts may provide impetus for a more unified approach across agencies or management regions, which would serve to not only provide more comprehensive information but also to minimize costs associated with monitoring efforts.

While it is laudable to seek more and better information, it is equally important for the resource management community to proceed with designing strategies that are robust in the face of limited information. Due to uncertainties in modeling and in the response of ecosystems to climate change and to management interventions, precise information on some questions may be impossible or prohibitively expensive or time consuming to acquire. If this is the case and if the information is needed for a specific adaptation action, then it may be that the action is not practical or is at a high risk for failure with implementation.

Another need on the information and science front is investment in resources and training for the promotion of flexible approaches to adaptation management. This would include developing general guidance on the likely impacts of concern and their implications for ecosystem services and management.

• NEW LAWS: NEW FUTURE LAWS
• Du droit romain au droit byzantin (French Edition)
• Manille : embarquement immédiat (Le monde à cœur battant) (French Edition)
• Haunted - A Bridgeton Park Cemetery Book: #1
• Mis Cuatro Estaciones:Tener una Enfermedad, No Significa Estar Enfermo (Italian Edition)
• Encadenada a un bárbaro (Harlequin Internacional) (Spanish Edition)